The Kaufmann Governance Post

Why transparency, governance and corruption matter, and what we can all do about it

• Home
• About this Blog
• About Daniel Kaufmann
• What’s New
• Governance Fun..
• Arts and Music
• Disclaimer

About my Work

• Articles in SSRN
• Farewell Lecture @ The World Bank
• Presentations
• Publications
• Surveys — In-depth Country Diagnostics
• Webinar: Capture & the Financial Crisis
• Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI)

Blogs and Webs of the Week

• Global Leaders can be Made

Blogs I Follow

• Africa Unchained
• Bayesian Heresy
• Brad DeLong
• CGD
• Chris Blattman’s
• CIPE Blog
• Economist’s View
• EITI
• Freedom House Governance
• Global Integrity Commons
• Greg Mankiw
• Human Rights Watch
• IMF PFM Blog
• Jeff Frankel
• Macroscope Reuters blog
• MTEF
• ODI Blog
• Open Budget
• Oxfam Y-Gen blog
• Private Sector Development
• Rodrik’s blog
• Thoughts on Economics

Brief Articles

• Aid Effectiveness & Governance
• Annual Bribery: 1 trillion dollars
• Civil Liberties & Aid Effectiveness
• Corruption, Capture and the Financial Crisis
• G20 can learn from well governed countries
• Human Rights & Development
• State Capture in Transition
• Ten Myths on Governance and Corruption
• The End of Ideology: G20 Summit Aftermath

Datalinks on Governance

• Global Integrity Report
• Human Rights Data
• Ibrahim Index of African Governance
• Indicators by MinFinance of France
• Reporters without Borders — Press Freedom
• TI Corruption
• WGI

Governance Maps

• World Freedom Atlas

Selected Papers

• Civil Liberties & Investment Performance
• Colonialism, Inequality, & Development
• Governance Indicators: Survey Article (WBRO)
• Governance Matters VIII: Governance Indicators 1996-2008
• Growth without Governance
• Human Rights & Governance
• Legal Corruption
• The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development

Some Sites I Like

• Article XIX
• BIC
• Development Gateway
• G-20 could learn from “Missing” Countries (ggg-8)
• Global Witness
• Governance Lessons to G-20 Summit from Missing Countries
• Governance Matters @ World Bank
• IMF Fiscal Tranparency
• Internews
• Revenue Watch
• The Economist’s Voice
• Transparency International
• U4 Anticorruption

Technorati

Governance News

Translator

English • العربية • Deutsch • Español • Français • Italiano • Português 漢語

Search this site

Click orange RSS icon to subscribe

• Indicadores Mundiales de Gobernabilidad 2009
• Governance Matters 2009: Learning From Over a Decade of the Worldwide Governance Indicators
• Back to the Future in the Middle East: Governance Stagnation
• Grand Donor Illusion and Larceny in Africa?

Topics

• Aid Effectiveness
• capture
• Corruption
• financial crisis
• G-20
• Measurement Frontiers
• Public Financial Management
• Public-Private Linkages
• Rule of Law
• Transparency
• Voice and Human Rights

Recent Posts

• Indicadores Mundiales de Gobernabilidad 2009
• Governance Matters 2009: Learning From Over a Decade of the Worldwide Governance Indicators
• Back to the Future in the Middle East: Governance Stagnation
• Grand Donor Illusion and Larceny in Africa?
• Financial Crisis, Africa’s Permanent Damage, and Aid Effectiveness
• Financial Crisis as the Kiss of Death to the Governance Agenda?
• Captura del Estado y Corrupción Legal en los EEUU: Realidad o Ilusión?
• Financial Crisis and the Media: Capture, Culture and Incentives, or Lack of Training?
• V Summit of the Americas Concludes with ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers’
• Concluye la Quinta Cumbre de las Américas: Ganadores y Perdedores
• Obama and the Summit of the Americas: One Eye Wide Open, Another Shut
• Obama, EEUU y la Cumbre de las Américas

Recent comments

• Vicente Vargas on Gobernabilidad o Gobernanza?: ‘Governance’ en español, en breve
• Joe Smith on Back to the Future in the Middle East: Governance Stagnation
• Dr Sheila Ochugboju on Grand Donor Illusion and Larceny in Africa?
• Jacqui Porth on From Madoff to Stanford Ponzi, from SEC to Congress: in dire need of political reforms
• Jim Wesberry on Financial Crisis, Africa’s Permanent Damage, and Aid Effectiveness
• Kent Sjolund on Financial Crisis, Africa’s Permanent Damage, and Aid Effectiveness
• HealThoid on Financial Crisis and the Media: Capture, Culture and Incentives, or Lack of Training?
• FoxJudsf on Financial Crisis and the Media: Capture, Culture and Incentives, or Lack of Training?
• john brightman on Will showdown on Global Financial Regulation be averted at the G-20 Summit?
• Finance Information Blog on Financial Crisis as the Kiss of Death to the Governance Agenda?

Email Subscription

Archives

• July 2009
• June 2009
• May 2009
• April 2009
• March 2009
• February 2009
• January 2009
• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• July 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008

My pages

• About this Blog
• About Daniel Kaufmann
• What’s New
• Governance Fun..
• Arts and Music
• Disclaimer

Tag Cloud

Africa Bono Botswana bribery Brookings Burma capture Chile China Colombia definition e-governance EEUU financial crisis Forbes G-8 G-20 Summit G20 G20 Summit G20Voice Germany gobernanza governance Kenya legal corruption LondonSummit Madoff Mexico myths Nigeria Norway Obama Olympics Ponzinomics Ponzi schemes Regulation Russia SEC stimulus UK US WBI WGI World Bank Zimbabwe

Governance News

Technorati

Calendar

« Myth #2: Only Rich Countries can afford Good Governance & Rule of Law? — on The Economist’s ‘Order in the Jungle’ | Main | IT for Governing or for Governance?: From Hungary to Chile to Burma »

Myth # 3: Governance cannot be defined?

By Kaufmann | March 26, 2008

In debunking the previous myth, I tried to challenge those ‘governoskeptics’ who doubt that governance and rule of law matter much for growth and development.  Yet governoskeptics come in different guises; for instance there are those that do not believe that governance can be measured — I leave that claim for a future blog entry.  Here I address those ‘governoskeptics’ who claim that governance is nearly impossible to define. 

There are many different definitions of governance.  Some are extremely broad, coming close to equating it with development itself.   One illustration of this side of the spectrum is by the famed Doug North some time ago: “How do we account for poverty in the midst of plenty? ….. We must create incentives for people to invest in more efficient technology, increase their skills, and organize efficient markets …..  Such incentives are embodied in institutions”.   Worse, applications by others are even more ‘tautological’, explicitly including within governance some core development outcomes such as per capita income or its distribution.  Such tautology does not further our understanding of what governance is, of course, and impedes our ability to ask whether governance is important for development or viceversa –simply, we would have not been able to address myth #2. 

     

     At the other extreme of the spectrum there are those who tend to view governance very narrowly, within a public sector economic management lense.  An example of this ‘anorexic’ version happens to come from the World Bank many years ago, which saw governance as “…the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development”.   In some governments and organizations around the world there are still those who would prefer the anorexic version of governance, belittling the role of civil society voice and the fundamental freedoms of the citizenry, such as the right to an honest vote, to give and receive uncensored information, and to be free of state-sponsored torture.  There is a parallel here with the discussion in last week’s article in The Economist, where an interpretation of Rule of Law may be ’thin’ enough to be strictly equated with Law and Order, which would leave out all the politically inconvenient content. 

So this definitional range spans the two extremes, from the anorexics to the tautologists.  Yet nowadays many, though not all,  may be of the view that neither extreme is satisfactory, and would seek a more centrist notion.  At the outset of my decade long collaboration with Aart Kraay in the “Governance Matters” series, drawing from the literature, we defined governance as “…the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised. This includes the process by which governments are selected, monitored and replaced; the capacity of the government to effectively formulate and implement sound policies; and  the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them”.   In that definition, we tried to encompass the relevant political, institutional and economic dimensions of governance (rather than focusing only on the latter), while stopping short from being so broad to also include development outcomes within such notion of governance, so to avoid the tautology trap.

             There are nowadays a number of centrist variants in defining governance, each with its own merits.  But the main point is that once one has steered clear from the anorexics and tautologists, the extent of the disagreement among the centrist rest will be of second order, or worse, splitting hairs.  Practically speaking, irrespective of which centrist definition of governance one prefers, it would be expected to include the effective and honest functioning of the key institutions in the executive, legislative and the judiciary –state capabilities and rule of law–, the rules of the game governing a level playing field for dynamic private sector development, basic principles of opennesss and transparency, and the protection of human and property rights as well as of media and citizen freedoms. 

A particularly distorted variant of the anorexics comes from some anti-corruption zealots, who tend to equate governance with corruption.  That is another myth.  If we take the centrist definition of governance mentioned above, controlling corruption, is part of good governance, but only one among a number of key dimensions.  In fact, looking at the standard definition of corruption “the abuse of public office for private gain”, it is clear how different it is from any reasonable definition of governance.  [I leave the problems with this old definition of corruption, which places an overly legalistic limelight on public officials,  for future blogging.] 

The focus here is on the case against the governoskeptics, governorexics and tautologists.  And also on constructively suggesting that there is already a set of definitions to choose from, most of which are eminently reasonable.  Whichever centrist definition of governance one prefers, it is important to focus concretely on the next stage.  That means emphasis on rigorous measurement, monitoring, and analysis of governance at the country, subnational and institutional level.  And focusing on the formulation and implementation of sensible strategies and actions.  Let us keep in mind that in parallel to the continuing academic debates on concepts and definitions, some country leaders and public institutions, as well as countless citizens and NGOs, have been carrying out concrete actions to improve governance for a long time.  Others haven’t. 

[Aqui para un link a un blog entry en español]

Topics: Corruption, Measurement Frontiers, Public Financial Management, Public-Private Linkages, Rule of Law, Transparency, Voice and Human Rights | |

One Response to “Myth # 3: Governance cannot be defined?”

1. Mauricio Galvez Says:
   November 1st, 2008 at 12:56 am

   I would like to share with you this definition of governance, which currently I’m using in my thesis work about governance in Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs):

   “the whole body of public as well as private interactions taken to solve problems and create societal opportunities. It includes the formulation of principles guiding those interactions and care for institutions that enable them” (Kooiman and Bavick, 2005: 17).

   Kooiman, J. and M. Bavinck (2005), “The governing perspective”, in: Kooiman, J., et al. (Eds.), Fish for Life: Interactive Governance for Fisheries, pp. 11–24. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam.

   Saludos de un compatriota en New Zealand!

   Mauricio Galvez

Comments

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website (not required)

Register

|Log in | Disclaimer